Critical Reasoning

Mayur Sand wrote:what is the OA ?

gmatmachoman wrote:TestLuv,

Once again such a wonderful post from you.

What makes me feel" mesmerised" is u r too good in deciphering the type of question be it LSAT or GMAT ones!!

Yeah this one was from LSAT....

Many Thx bro

Testluv wrote:The correct answer must be choice D.

This is another explain the phenomenon or cause of the effect type of argument.

The first and second sentences describe a phenomenon, while the third sentence advances an explanation for that phenomenon.

The phenomenon: Smoking declined.

The author's explanation: The ads (and not the taxes!) caused the decrease in smoking. ("Clearly what was said in the advertisements had an effect"...)

Whenever the author makes an explain-the-phenomenon argument, he is assuming that there are no other explanations.

The way we strengthen an argument is by finding an answer choice that backs up the assumption.

How do we back up the assumption that there are no other explanations?

The most common way it will happen on the GMAT is to look for an answer choice that negates an alternative explanation.

A clear competing alternative explanation from the stimulus is the tax itself. (That is, instead of the ads' content causing the decline in smoking, it could have been the tax-fuelled increase in the costs of the cigarettes that caused the decline in smoking).

So, we would be looking for any choice that says "the tax was not the reason the smoking went down".

Choice D is a perfect match to our prediction. It tells us that the merchants absorbed the cigarette tax; therefore, the consumers who buy the cigarettes did not suffer, did not incur, the tax increase.

The fact that they did not have to pay more for the cigarettes and that they still decreased their smoking strengthens the author's argument that what was said in the ads caused the smoking decline.

Choice B does not strengthen the argument that smoking decreased because of the ads' content. Instead, it simply affirms the fact that smoking did decrease. In other words, choice B does not give us any new information; we already knew from the passage that smoking declined. For, that was the very phenomenon about which the author was advancing an explanation.

Although this looks like an LSAT question, it is a very fair and even a good representation of how strengthening/weakening commonly works on the GMAT. Many of the strengthen/weaken questions on the GMAT are of the "explain the phenomenon" variety. The quicker you are able to spot the form, and the better you know how to analyze the form, the more efficiently and confidently and easiliy you can answer a question like this. Therefore, according to me, a great idea would be to go through the CR section of the OG, explicitly pulling out those stn/wkn questions that use this form.

Testluv wrote:The correct answer must be choice D.

This is another explain the phenomenon or cause of the effect type of argument.

The first and second sentences describe a phenomenon, while the third sentence advances an explanation for that phenomenon.

The phenomenon: Smoking declined.

The author's explanation: The ads (and not the taxes!) caused the decrease in smoking. ("Clearly what was said in the advertisements had an effect"...)

Whenever the author makes an explain-the-phenomenon argument, he is assuming that there are no other explanations.

The way we strengthen an argument is by finding an answer choice that backs up the assumption.

How do we back up the assumption that there are no other explanations?

The most common way it will happen on the GMAT is to look for an answer choice that negates an alternative explanation.

A clear competing alternative explanation from the stimulus is the tax itself. (That is, instead of the ads' content causing the decline in smoking, it could have been the tax-fuelled increase in the costs of the cigarettes that caused the decline in smoking).

So, we would be looking for any choice that says "the tax was not the reason the smoking went down".

Choice D is a perfect match to our prediction. It tells us that the merchants absorbed the cigarette tax; therefore, the consumers who buy the cigarettes did not suffer, did not incur, the tax increase.

The fact that they did not have to pay more for the cigarettes and that they still decreased their smoking strengthens the author's argument that what was said in the ads caused the smoking decline.

Choice B does not strengthen the argument that smoking decreased because of the ads' content. Instead, it simply affirms the fact that smoking did decrease. In other words, choice B does not give us any new information; we already knew from the passage that smoking declined. For, that was the very phenomenon about which the author was advancing an explanation.

Although this looks like an LSAT question, it is a very fair and even a good representation of how strengthening/weakening commonly works on the GMAT. Many of the strengthen/weaken questions on the GMAT are of the "explain the phenomenon" variety. The quicker you are able to spot the form, and the better you know how to analyze the form, the more efficiently and confidently and easiliy you can answer a question like this. Therefore, according to me, a great idea would be to go through the CR section of the OG, explicitly pulling out those stn/wkn questions that use this form.

Testluv wrote:


You can tell this is an LSAT question because of the verbal "tics" that it uses. For example, in the last sentence, it throws in the intervening modifying phrase "although a small one" (the effect must have been small because the decrease was only 3 percent). This is verbal "filler" that one needs to cut through to really understand the decisive ideas in the argument. This is more of an LSAT than a GMAT test-maker tactic. So, that's why I suspected it was an LSAT question! Nonetheless, as I said in my post, this happens to be a very good representation of how strengthening/weakening questions often work on the GMAT.